Mourao, o Conciliador - Ishaan Tharoor (WP)

BY ISHAAN THAROOR

The tough job of Brazil’s vice president

(Eraldo Peres/AP)

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro marked 100 days in office last week. A far-right firebrand and former army captain, Bolsonaro emerged from the fringes of the National Congress to sweep presidential elections in 2018, riding a wave of popular disenchantment with the country’s sagging economy and its widely reviled political establishment. But he has struggled in his first months on the job.

A controversial restructuring of the country’s pensions system, as well as other measures to curb corruption and crime, hit legislative roadblocks. Bolsonaro, who is recovering from an assassination attempt that nearly killed him last year, suffered health setbacks following a third surgery related to the incident, keeping him for an extended period in the hospital and on orders not to even speak. At home, members of Bolsonaro’s family were implicated in a series of ongoing investigations, which include allegations of suspicious kickbacks and ties to paramilitary gangs in Rio de Janeiro. It’s a troubling development for a president who staked his political legitimacy on a supposedly squeaky-clean record. Polls show that support from Brazilian evangelical voters — a key plank of his base — is starting to slip.

Through it all, the notoriously brash Bolsonaro has stuck to his rhetorical guns, coloring the early days of his presidency with a slew of incendiary remarks. Last month, to the chagrin of many, he moved to honor a 1964 military coup that ushered in two decades of brutal dictatorship. During Brazil’s Carnival he circulated a pornographic video on his Twitter account, in a misfiring attempt to attack the left and stoke outrage toward LGBTQ Brazilians.

On a visit to Israel this month, he declared Nazism to be a leftist creed, a claim that historians reject outright but one that fits Bolsonaro’s political posturing. To compound the matter, in an address to evangelical pastors in Rio on Thursday night, Bolsonaro said that one could “forgive” the perpetrators of the Holocaust, but not “forget” its horrors. The remarks earned swift repudiation from Israel’s president and the country’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, while critics pointed to earlier occasions when Bolsonaro had dabbled in a kind of Nazi apologia.

These apparent gaffes may reflect the missteps of a new president habituating himself to power. But they also reflect a stubbornly ideological streak coursing through the Bolsonaro presidency. Analysts point to the president’s embrace of a broader far-right, nationalist zeitgeist, one that’s amplified by a clique of supporters around him, including Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo, who subscribe to a similar “antiglobalist” worldview.

But not everyone in Bolsonaro’s circle is on the same page. Most notably, Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, in the United States on a diplomatic visit, and Vice President Hamilton Mourão, have attempted to steer governance along a more “normal” track and have gently pushed back against Bolsonaro in the news media. “They are not a monolith, but they generally favor a more pragmatic approach to foreign policy, noting for example that China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner,” wrote Brian Winter of Americas Quarterly about the cabinet officials in Mourão’s camp. “Many couldn’t care less about the social issues — ‘gender ideology,’ ‘cultural Marxism’ and so on — that tend to animate Bolsonaro’s hard core base.”

Speaking to Today’s WorldView last week during an official visit to Washington, Mourão sought to play down the significance of his president’s words.

“Sometimes he has some hard expressions,” Mourão said of Bolsonaro, adding that the comment in Israel on Nazism and the left was perhaps made so that Araújo — who had originally made the claim — “did not feel alone.” Mourão contended that Bolsonaro probably “doesn’t fully believe” the line he seemed to endorse.

“I think he wanted to make a point, and maybe he went in a wrong direction,” Mourão said. “But these are things of the past. We have to understand that in this new world that we’re living in, these questions of right and left must be left behind.”

Mourão, a retired four-star general, was not keen to look backward. Bolsonaro’s fondness for the 1964 coup, Mourão said, was simply about “history” and satisfying some members of his base who may have nostalgia for that era. But he said the new Brazilian government was “marching in a good way” toward the implementation of its desired changes, including the pension and public security bills held up in Congress, as well as plans toward further deregulation of the Brazilian economy.

Far from the heated nationalism that characterized Bolsonaro’s election campaign — and the soft bigotry toward minorities, indigenous groups and other vulnerable communities that shaped much of Bolsonaro’s political career — Mourão insisted that the true creed of the Bolsonaro administration is “liberalism.” That is, he claimed, a set of democratic values at odds with those “who believe the state should intervene in the markets.”

Bolsonaro is “under the constitution, and he fully respects our institutions,” Mourão said. “He’s a politician and understands very well that as president he’s president of all Brazilians, those who voted for him and those who didn’t.”

Despite his conciliatory pose, the vice president has grown quite accustomed to checking his boss. In February, he called on the president to rein in his sons, outspoken politicians in their own right who have courted ties with far-right figures such as former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and are particularly active on social media. After Bolsonaro celebrated the departure of Jean Wyllys, a prominent LGBT congressman who left the country out of security fears, Mourão said that the threats faced by Wyllys constituted “a crime against democracy.”

When Bolsonaro toured Israel and floated the possibility of moving the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem, Mourão met with the Palestinian ambassador in Brazil to offer assurances that it might not happen. While Bolsonaro, possibly in a fit of Trumpist pique, has so far shunned China, Mourão has plans to visit China next month and told Today’s WorldView that Brazil “can’t run away” from a market that may soon eclipse Europe. And even though Bolsonaro has refused to rule out backing a possible U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, his vice president was more categorical in his rejection of the idea.

“A classic invasion of Venezuela to overthrow [President Nicolás] Maduro — I don’t see this as a solution,” Mourão said. “Because we know how it’s going to begin, but we don’t know how it’s going to end.”

Unsurprisingly, Bolsonaro’s backers aren’t especially pleased with the role played by Mourão. “Everyone is pissed off at Mourão, who has turned out to be a real pain in the a--, as well as a media hog,” Gerald Brant, a New York-based hedge-fund executive and a friend of the Bolsonaros, told the New Yorker last month.

But Mourão — who on the campaign trail was seen as even more of a hard-liner than Bolsonaro — shrugs at the suggestion that he is a “moderating” influence on the presidency. “We were elected to govern for the whole of Brazil. We do politics by dialogue,” he said. “I don’t think this is moderation. This is just good politics.”

Steve Bannon, um dos gurus dos bolsonaristas - Ishaan Tharoor (WP)

Exposing the town crier of the West’s far right

Ishaan Tharoor

The Washington Post, April 1st, 2019

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Though Stephen K. Bannon left his White House post as President Trump’s chief strategist more than a year and a half ago, the shadow he casts over Western politics has hardly faded. The former investment banker and executive chairman of far-right Breitbart News became one of the leading ideologues of Trumpism — building a creed that allied American nativism with the language of European far-right nationalism — and helped push Trump toward his improbable electoral victory in 2016. In the months after palace intrigues forced him out of the West Wing, Bannon remained close to figures within the administration and even closer to the world of journalists who report on it.

Bannon extended his brand as both populist soothsayer and rabble-rouser across the Atlantic, offering support to a constellation of far-right, ultranationalist and anti-immigrant parties across Europe. His listening tours and speeches last year in Britain, France, Italy, Hungary and elsewhere attracted large numbers of mainstream journalists, whose stories placed Bannon at the heart of a far-right insurgency that seeks to blow up the status quo in European parliamentary elections this May.

“This populist-nationalist revolt is a worldwide phenomenon,’’ Bannon told Bloomberg News last December, adding that the upcoming elections were a “historic moment.” 

Bannon, indeed, seems to be in a constant search for “historic” dramas, and ways to locate himself within them. Enter “The Brink,” a new and already critically acclaimed documentary in theaters across the United States that tracks his activities in the year after his exit from the White House. In it, we hear Bannon grandiosely quote Abraham Lincoln as his enemies loomed around him. We watch him scribble in the margins of a newspaper column a crude diagram charting the “triple threat” posed — for reasons only Bannon can divine — by an axis of China, Turkey and Iran. And we listen to him rage against the West’s liberals, who he declares are content “to manage the decline” of their civilization.

We also see Bannon guzzle copious amounts of energy drinks, snarl at complacent assistants, and, on numerous occasions, exhibit an almost disarmingly charming penchant for self-deprecation. The fly-on-the-wall approach of Alison Klayman, the film’s director, offers a rarely seen portrait of the man once dubbed by Time magazine as the “great manipulator” — and one that happens to rather adroitly dispel the myth of his political genius.

“I think the image that emerges of him is a much more human one, but certainly not soft and cuddly,” Klayman told Today’s WorldView. She said her efforts to go “behind the curtain” show how Bannon’s agenda is “in some ways more convoluted” than it is sometimes framed in the mainstream media, spurred both by his personal desire for attention and the imperatives of his wealthy backers. It’s why, Klayman added, “I think some people see him as an opportunist.” 

Take, for example, Bannon’s insistence that his politics center on “economic nationalism” — a populist message about protecting the working class and curbing the excesses of globalization. In a stump speech before Republican donors, Bannon uses this line to dismiss the accusations of racism and bigotry often leveled against him, Trump and the right-wing nationalist base whose support they need.

But, after months of following Bannon on trips in private jets and private fundraising sessions with billionaires, Klayman concluded that Bannon’s economic populism “is a little bit of a branding exercise.” In his meetings with patrons and far-right politicians, Klayman said, Bannon “is not talking about how we make policies that bring back manufacturing jobs. But he is talking about birthrates and how to win elections by talking about religion.” 

In a drive through London, we see him roll his eyes in despair when informed that a particular street has “flipped” to mostly Arab businesses. He notes with glee that left-wing populists such as Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the United States don’t grandstand about immigration — a refusal he believes will limit their appeal among working-class voters. In lavish hotel dining rooms, Bannon and a motley crew of European far-right politicians grouse over the alien menace of Islam and growing Muslim populations in their countries.

It’s difficult to ignore the more disturbing echoes of Bannon’s ideologyin the aftermath of the slaughter carried out by a white supremacist, animated by similar concerns, in Christchurch, New Zealand, last month. “These aren’t siloed biases,” said Klayman, referring to the hatred felt by the Christchurch shooter. “There’s a worldview that makes it all fit together.” 

Klayman’s first major entry into the world of documentary cinema was “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” a 2012 feature film on the Chinese dissident artist, who has since been forced to flee his native country. In subsequent work, he has sought to draw attention to the plight of refugees and migrants around the world. While Ai is intent on “honoring human dignity,” Klayman said, Bannon “is very expressly not concerned with that.”

"He goes around and talks about making people’s lives better, but you know it’s only about certain people’s lives, while he ignores the suffering of others,” she said.

The film also shows the limits of Bannon’s powers. We watch him endure three demoralizing setbacks: The failed Senate campaign of controversial Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama; the landslide defeats that hit the Republican Party in the House in midterms last year; and the ultimate sputtering of his attempt to lead a continental far-right coalition in Europe.

Still, Bannon is hardly one to give up, and journalists continue to chase after him on both sides of the Atlantic. Last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed him for the majority of his one-hour prime-time show. In Rome, Bannon admitted at an event that Europe’s nationalists “don’t need me,” but still prophesied their victory and emphasized his commitment to their struggle.

In one pivotal scene in “The Brink,” Bannon lectures Klayman on how the Democrats’ insistence on “identity politics” will give the Republicans victory. But when challenged by Klayman, who argues that his messaging centers wholly on “identity” politics and tribal outrage, he smirks, and quips that such bad faith would make his work — in this instance, a pro-Trump film he was previewing to journalists — just “propaganda.”

“What would Leni Riefenstahl do?” he then asks Klayman, referring to the chief filmmaking propagandist of the Nazi era. “How would Leni cut that scene?” It’s a chilling moment, not least because it’s not totally clear that he’s joking.

O mundo segundo Washington: declínio de um imperio - The Washington Post

December 17, 2018

Edited by Max J. Rosenthal and Ruby Mellen BY ISHAAN THAROOR   Trump sparks a debate over the future of American power President Trump will retreat to his Florida resort at the end of this week. Nearing the halfway point of his term in office, his political isolation in Washington is deepening. A slew of candidates balked at taking the job of White House chief of staff — a post of tremendous influence that has in the age of Trump become a poisoned chalice from which few want to drink. A funding spat with the Democrats prompted Trump to vow a government shutdown, much to the chagrin of members of his own party. And the legal inquiries into the president’s campaign and businesses are mounting. It’s not just Trump’s domestic agenda that’s facing scrutiny. Last week, Trump received a stinging bipartisan rebuke from Congress over his administration’s embrace of the Saudi-led war in Yemen and the particularly reckless royal holding power in Riyadh. The high-profile climate meetings that took place in Poland only underscored the extent to which this White House has alienated itself from the international mainstream on environmental policy — and highlighted, yet again, how the rest of the world is plowing ahead in spite of Trump, not with him. Of course, Trump came to power vowing to be a disrupter on the global stage. He said he was intent on reforming a post-World War II international order that had outlived its usefulness for Americans. But the White House’s efforts overseas — including its rejection of the Paris climate accord, the waging of trade wars, the unraveling of the Iran nuclear deal, the persistent belittling of allies and the perplexing coddling of autocrats — have unsettled Washington as much as they have disturbed American partners abroad. To be sure, discussions about the waning of the United States as the world’s sole superpower predate Trump. But two years of his tumultuous presidency have intensified Washingtonian angst about the future of American power and how America should seek to lead a more fractured planet — or whether it should try at all. “It’s historical fact that great nations and empires all have a beginning and an end,” said James Jones, a retired U.S. general, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama and outgoing chairman of the Atlantic Council, speaking Friday in Washington at a forum hosted by his think tank. “There’s a naive belief in our country that there’s some sort of destiny, that the primacy of the United States is ensured for some reason forever. I don’t think that’s the case.” To that end, the Atlantic Council, an organization deeply invested in the furtherance of American leadership, is planning on floating a new set of principles to safeguard the “rules-based order” — the euphemism often used to explain the status quo authored by the United States more than half a century ago. It wants to “revitalize” and “defend” this order, not just from the rising authoritarian might of China, but in the face of Trump’s own nationalist and protectionist agenda and those of his ilk. At the forum, speakers warned of the White House’s disregard for “values-based” foreign policy — seen both in Trump’s cynical accommodation of figures such as the Saudi crown prince as well as his demagoguery over migrants and refugees coming to the United States. Washington, they feared, was seeing its credibility evaporate among allies. This sentiment was echoed by Jake Sullivan, a former Obama administration official and Hillary Clinton adviser, in a recent essay outlining what a liberal, post-Trump foreign policy ought to look like. “An energized, inspiring, and ultimately successful foreign policy must cut through Trump’s false, dog-whistling choice between globalism and nationalism,” wrote Sullivan. “It must combine the best kind of patriotism (a shared civic spirit and a clear sense of the national interest) and the best kind of internationalism (a recognition that when your neighbor’s house is on fire, you need to grab a bucket). And it should reject the worst kind of nationalism (damn-the-consequences aggression and identity-based hate-mongering) and the worst kind of internationalism (the self-congratulatory insulation of the Davos elite).” But that’s a tricky needle to thread. On the right, Trump and his lieutenants have spent their time in power casting the liberal pieties of the Obama era as supposed obstacles to the American national interest and see themselves at the forefront of a nationalist wave taking control across the world. Among the Democrats, there’s a burgeoning debate about what kind of counter to “internationalism” ought to be embraced: It’s easy to scorn the “Davos elite,” but it’s another thing to pursue policies that target the power and privileges of influential multinational corporations or question the shibboleths of free trade and laissez-faire capitalism. It’s sensible to urge American restraint in the Middle East and other geopolitical flash points, but it’s harder to convince official Washington to eschew new military entanglements. And though Trump and his political rivals may not agree on much, both may succumb to the old temptations of the Cold War. At the Atlantic Council’s forum, the specter of China loomed over proceedings. Adm. Michael Rogers, a former head of the National Security Agency, feared China could outpace the United States in its abilities to wage cyberwarfare. Sen. Tom Cotton (R.-Ark.), a figure largely loyal to Trump, described China as “a unique adversary in the world.” Though Cotton’s hawkish views on Iran have earned him many detractors, there aren’t that many lawmakers on the other side of the aisle who would disagree with his antipathy toward Beijing. That the United States is almost inexorably lurching into a great-power confrontation with China ought to be a concern, suggested Emma Ashford and Trevor Thrall of the libertarian Cato Institute. “The growing consensus on China is troubling. Having identified China as America’s biggest strategic challenge, neither party has identified a clear goal,” Ashford and Thrall wrote. “Nor have they articulated how a new approach to China would provide a foundation for a broader vision of American foreign policy . . . The risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on China — through confrontation without purpose — is real.” Analysts liken the febrile moment to an earlier era of 19th century politics, when Europe’s industrializing, imperial powers entered into alliances that ultimately convulsed the world into conflict. “What we are seeing today resembles the mid-nineteenth century in important ways: the post — World War II, post — Cold War order cannot be restored, but the world is not yet on the edge of a systemic crisis,” wrote Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. A century ago, that crisis arrived. This time, the current crop of American politicians — Trump included — can still stave off calamity. “Now is the time to make sure one never materializes, be it from a breakdown in U.S.-Chinese relations, a clash with Russia, a conflagration in the Middle East, or the cumulative effects of climate change,” Haass continued. “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”

• Here’s how Haass sets up his history lesson on the Concert of Europe:  “If the end of every order is inevitable, the timing and the manner of its ending are not. Nor is what comes in its wake. Orders tend to expire in a prolonged deterioration rather than a sudden collapse. And just as maintaining the order depends on effective statecraft and effective action, good policy and proactive diplomacy can help determine how that deterioration unfolds and what it brings. Yet for that to happen, something else must come first: recognition that the old order is never coming back and that efforts to resurrect it will be in vain. As with any ending, acceptance must come before one can move on. "In the search for parallels to today’s world, scholars and practitioners have looked as far afield as ancient Greece, where the rise of a new power resulted in war between Athens and Sparta, and the period after World War I, when an isolationist United States and much of Europe sat on their hands as Germany and Japan ignored agreements and invaded their neighbors. But the more illuminating parallel to the present is the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century, the most important and successful effort to build and sustain world order until our own time. From 1815 until the outbreak of World War I a century later, the order established at the Congress of Vienna defined many international relationships and set (even if it often failed to enforce) basic rules for international conduct. It provides a model of how to collectively manage security in a multipolar world. "That order’s demise and what followed offer instructive lessons for today—and an urgent warning. Just because an order is in irreversible decline does not mean that chaos or calamity is inevitable. But if the deterioration is managed poorly, catastrophe could well follow.” • A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office, report my colleagues: “The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said if it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week. "The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details on how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for meddling in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.” • At a time when Congress is trying to challenge Trump’s pursuit of war in Yemen, my colleague Liz Sly points in a lengthy piece to a hidden war that the president has advanced in Syria: “The commitment is small, a few thousand troops who were first sent to Syria three years ago to help the Syrian Kurds fight the Islamic State. President Trump indicated in March that the troops would be brought home once the battle is won, and the latest military push to eject the group from its final pocket of territory recently got underway. "In September, however, the administration switched course, saying the troops will stay in Syria pending an overall settlement to the Syrian war and with a new mission: to act as a bulwark against Iran’s expanding influence. "That decision puts U.S. troops in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria, a vast expanse of mostly desert terrain roughly the size of Louisiana. "The Pentagon does not say how many troops are there. Officially, they number 503, but earlier this year an official let slip that the true number may be closer to 4,000. Most are Special Operations forces, and their footprint is light. Their vehicles and convoys rumble by from time to time along the empty desert roads, but it is rare to see U.S. soldiers in towns and cities. "The new mission raises new questions, about the role they will play and whether their presence will risk becoming a magnet for regional conflict and insurgency.” • An investigation by the New York Times digs up damning evidence of how the powerful U.S. consulting firm McKinsey abets anti-democratic regimes and practices. It kicks off its story at a desert retreat for the company’s associates in China: “For a quarter-century, the company has joined many American corporations in helping stoke China’s transition from an economic laggard to the world’s second-largest economy. But as China’s growth presents a muscular challenge to American dominance, Washington has become increasingly critical of some of Beijing’s signature policies, including the ones McKinsey has helped advance. "One of McKinsey’s state-owned clients has even helped build China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea, a major point of military tension with the United States. "It turns out that McKinsey’s role in China is just one example of its extensive — and sometimes contentious — work around the world, according to an investigation by The New York Times that included interviews with 40 current and former McKinsey employees, as well as dozens of their clients. "At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, the iconic American company has helped raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests.”

The Washington Post se ocupa de Bolsonaro, como a Economist - Ishaan Tharoor

Edited by Max J. Rosenthal and Ruby Mellen   BY ISHAAN THAROOR   Is Brazil about to elect its own Trump? We’re entering the run-up to perhaps the most important election in the Western Hemisphere this year. Next month, Brazilians will elect new governors and legislatures in each of the country’s 27 states; all 513 members of the lower house of Congress; some two-thirds of the Senate; and, most importantly, a new president. The first round of the presidential election will be held on Oct. 7. For now, there’s only one politician who most expect to qualify for the two-candidate runoff on Oct. 28: 63-year-old Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right nationalist whose ascent echoes the rise of right-wing populists across the West, including that of President Trump. Brazil has been wracked by years of tumult: A vast corruption scandal has caused presidential impeachments and rolling political feuds. Economic havoc has led to a recession and millions of Brazilians are backsliding into poverty. Meanwhile, crime rates have soared. But, despite the mounting public anger and waves of mass protests that have hit the country’s major cities, little has fundamentally changed. While some establishment politicians are now in jail, dozens of others implicated in allegations of graft may win reelection to their seats in Congress. A poll last year found that only 13 percent of Brazilians were satisfied with their democracy. That backdrop has given Bolsonaro, a former army captain who eked out most of his career on the fringes of politics, his moment to shine. Like Trump, Bolsonaro has marshalled widespread disaffection to build a viral, anti-establishment movement. He, too, promises sweeping, bludgeoning reform — including the privatization of major state-owned companies — while pandering to a socially conservative base of voters, particularly an increasingly influential bloc of evangelical Christians. His campaign has, at least informally, sought the counsel of former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon. And Bolsonaro himself has welcomed comparisons to the U.S. president, whom he hails for challenging “political correctness” and the “rotten media” elite. Bolsonaro’s supporters see him as a “messiah” who will make Brazil great again. Others are not so convinced. A new cover story in the Economist branded the populist front-runner as “Latin America’s latest menace.” Two weeks ago, Bolsonaro survived a near-fatal stabbing attack while on the campaign trail. The ordeal added to his sense of epochal purpose. “What’s at stake? It’s not my future,” said the wounded candidate, speaking from his São Paolo hospital bed. “We live in a time when the future of more than 200 million Brazilians is at stake." Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s critics — and there are many — point to the rather unseemly side of his politics. Brazil’s top court recently ruled he would not have to stand trial for racist remarks he made during a speech in 2017, during which he said “that members of rural settlements founded by the descendants of slaves, called ‘quilombolas,’ are ‘not good even to procreate,'” according to the Associated Press. “He also talked about the weight of those slave descendants using a measure that Brazilian farmers apply to animals.” Bolsonaro does still have to go to court over accusations of slander and incitement to rape, dating back to a 2014 incident when he attacked a left-leaning congresswoman, saying he would not rape her because she was ugly and “didn’t deserve it.” He’s also well-known for his disparagement of LGBT Brazilians: Bolsonaro has said he would prefer a dead son to a gay one and has likened the right of gay couples to adopt to pedophilia. He has attacked immigrants as “scum” and has proposed selling off the lands of indigenous Brazilians. Unsurprisingly, Bolsonaro’s backers have framed his grossly offensive rhetoric as plain-speaking banter meant to cut through the platitudes of the corrupt and out-of-touch political class. Arrayed against Bolsonaro is a cast of centrist and center-left challengers. One potential opponent in the second round is Fernando Haddad, a former mayor of São Paolo and a key figure within the left-leaning Workers Party. Haddad was tapped to run by popular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who languishes behind bars on a corruption conviction his supporters insist is politically motivated. A Bolsonaro vs. Haddad showdown raises the prospect of a bitter left vs. right clash. “Many thought that by the time we got close to the election, some middle ground would be found, and that is not what we are seeing,” said Monica de Bolle, director of Latin American studies program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to Reuters. To the alarm of his opponents, Bolsonaro has spoken admiringly of Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship, which ruled for multiple decades and disappeared and tortured countless leftist dissidents. His running mate, retired army general Hamilton Mourão, has even floated the idea of a coup against the judiciary and rewriting Brazil’s constitution to constrain civil liberties. “Bolsonaro represents a new brand of populism in Latin America, one that returns to its fascist origins across the world,” wrote Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New School. “Bolsonaro’s rise should serve as a reminder that we are experiencing a worldwide crisis of democracy, one not limited to Trumpism or the rise of the extreme right in Europe.” “If Brazil falls, if Brazil goes authoritarian, I would worry a lot about the rest of the region,” Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky said to HuffPost. “People in Latin America ― militaries in Latin America, demagogues and democrats in Latin America ― will be paying close attention to Brazil. It would have devastating regional consequences.” Like far-right leaders in Europe, Bolsonaro could still stumble at the final hurdle, with a critical mass uniting against him in the second round. “The ‘outsider’ option seems particularly attractive to many citizens. In Brazil, the ‘outsider’ candidate will probably make it to the second round,” noted Felipe Krause and Andre Borges in The Post’s Monkey Cage blog, before pointing to centrist French leaders who beat back far-right challenges. “But the nation’s constraints on extremists suggest whoever else reaches that round will be Brazil’s Jacques Chirac or Emmanuel Macron.” Still, in an era of virulent nationalist rage, it would be naive to count Bolsonaro out.

• The Economist runs through the other major candidates in the Brazilian presidential race: “Mr Haddad, his likeliest opponent in the second round, has a bigger party behind him and was a successful mayor. He promises to put debt ‘on a downward path.’ But his party is less reform-minded than he is. He will struggle to shake the perception that he is Lula’s puppet. "The other main candidates are less polarizing, and less likely to push voters into the arms of Mr Bolsonaro in the run-off. All have drawbacks. Ciro Gomes, a left-wing former governor of the north-eastern state of Ceará, favours interventionist policies of the sort that aggravated Brazil’s economic crisis, such as subsidized lending. "Two centrists are mirror images of each other. Geraldo Alckmin, a former governor of the state of São Paulo, is competent and backed by an enormous coalition, which bodes well for his ability to enact economic reforms. But he is colorless and belongs to the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), which is among the most tarnished by Lava Jato [or ‘Car Wash,’ the major corruption scandal that roiled Brazilian politics]. More inspiring is Marina Silva, a former environment minister who was born into an illiterate rubber-tapping family in the Amazon and learned to read when she was 16. Ms Silva shares Mr Bolsonaro’s unwillingness to engage in pork-barrel politics, which will make governing hard. She is more likely than the populist to stick to her resolve.”

Turquia vs USA, ou Erdogan vs Trump: um combate assimétrico -

Erdogan fights a losing battle with Trump

Ishaan Tharoor, The Washington Post, August 13, 2018

On Friday, the Turkish lira suffered its biggest one-day devaluation in nearly two decades, dropping more than 14 percent against the dollar. The minister of finance — the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — couldn’t avert the slide, delivering a halting speech that did little to boost confidence.

But Erdogan, as he so often does, placed the blame on a foreign scapegoat: the United States.

“Shame on you, shame on you,” he declared at a rally. "You are swapping your strategic partner in NATO for a pastor.”

The pastor in question is Andrew Brunson, an American clergyman who has been in Turkish custody since 2016. He is charged with espionage and other crimes — charges that he and U.S. officials reject. Attempts to win his freedom have so far failed.

According to my colleagues, Ankara hoped to swap Brunson for Hakan Atilla, a banker convicted in the United States for his role in a scheme that skirted U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil. But the Trump administration resents Turkey’s use of Brunson as a political hostage. A high-level meeting in Washington last week with a visiting Turkish delegation ended abruptly after the Americans demanded the pastor’s immediate release.

President Trump then announced increased tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel, which sent the value of the lira plummeting to a historic low. Turkey’s economic woes are of its own making, but the tariffs made things worse — and Trump was only too happy to take credit.

Erdogan continued his complaints in a New York Times op-ed, railing against “unilateral actions against Turkey by the United States, our ally of decades.” He recited the familiar catalog of affronts, including Washington’s unwillingness to hand over Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric accused of fomenting a failed 2016 coup against Erdogan, and continued American support for Syrian Kurdish factions. He then delivered a clear threat, urging Washington to “give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives.”

If the United States won’t change its approach, Erdogan warned, Turkey will “start looking for new friends and allies.” Indeed, the Turkish president has beefed up ties with Russia, attempted to mend fences with key Western European governments and, as a significant importer of Iranian oil, could undermine American efforts to isolate Tehran.

But this posturing will win him even more enemies in Washington, where Erdogan is already a deeply unpopular figure. Congress has passed legislation making a critical sale of F-35 jets to Turkeycontingent upon terms that include Brunson’s immediate release. Erdogan critics in U.S. foreign-policy circles loathe his creeping authoritarianism. And Trump, unlike previous presidents, has shown an endless willingness to bully erstwhile allies whenever he disagrees with them.

“Washington has generally tried to calm global markets in such moments, especially when investors are gripped by fear of contagion,” noted the Wall Street Journal. “Trump instead squeezed Ankara further.” This had global ramifications: Turkey’s wobbles stoked wider fears of fragility in other emerging markets and raised alarms among some major European banks that hold Turkish debt.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Aaron Stein, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, suggested Erdogan had badly miscalculated the situation. “The power balance is asymmetric, totally in the U.S. favor,” Stein said. “There are no guard rails to escalation on the U.S. side, and that’s where the Turks have completely, completely messed up in their understanding of what’s going on in the U.S.”

Erdogan’s appeals to NATO partnership ring especially hollow, given both Erdogan’s testy relations with Europe and Trump’s carping about the alliance. "For an administration or a president that doesn’t give much value to NATO, the value of Turkey as a staunch NATO ally also has declined,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics told Bloomberg News. “The Trump administration isn’t going to walk an extra mile to save an organization it doesn’t value.”

Analysts hope cooler heads prevail. “Turkey’s economic and legal problems are obvious, but sanctions by the U. S. are unlikely to help anything,” observed Turkish commentator Mustafa Akyol. “Rather they may be counterproductive, boosting Turkey’s nationalist mood and pushing the country further towards the Russian axis. More diplomacy is needed, not sanctions.”

But productive diplomacy is in short supply. Much of Erdogan’s politics now hinge on stirring nationalist sentiment to justify his tightening grip on the country. He won re-election in June with the backing of ultra-nationalists, arguing that greater control would help him steer Turkey’s flagging economy out of trouble. Instead, things have only gotten worse.

“The current crisis is the culmination of Erdogan’s reckless stewardship. Fixing it will take years — a task that will require new leadership and an entirely different mentality,” wrote Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and an Erdogan critic.

Nevertheless, even as Turkey suffers, Erdogan may not take much of a political hit. “Turkey’s toothless opposition ... fails to provide much hope,” Erdemir noted. “Without strong political forces to push him out, Erdogan will almost certainly continue to dig himself and the Turkish economy into a deeper hole.”

Trump also may gain more by refusing to compromise. He may relish the chance to act tough and appeal to his core supporters by squeezing a prominent Muslim leader over the fate of an American pastor.

“Backing Brunson plays to the American president’s base — all the more conspicuously so given that NASA scientist Serkan Golge, a dual Turkish–U.S. citizen, is also being held in Turkey, serving out a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for charges similar to those being brought against Brunson,” wrote Elmira Bayrasli, a professor of international affairs at Bard College.

Of course, she noted, there’s a key difference: “Golge is Muslim, unlike Brunson, whom Trump has called ‘a great Christian’ and ‘innocent man of faith.’ The Trump administration has said nothing about Golge’s detention.”